Online shopping is a form of electronic commerce that allows consumers to buy products from sellers over the Internet—typically using a browser on the World Wide Web, but also via native shopping applications. Worldwide online shopping sales volume for 2012 exceeded a trillion dollars.
A smartphone is a mobile phone with an operating system that combines features of a personal computer and other features useful for mobile or handheld use. Smartphones typically provide the functionality of a cell phone, such as personal digital assistant (PDA), a media player, a camera, and a Global Positioning System (GPS)-based navigation device. Most smartphones are equipped to access the Internet and have a touchscreen user interface. Some smartphones include mobile payment functionality. In 2014, smartphone sales worldwide topped 1.2 billion units. Several sources expect that search engine queries from mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablet computers, will surpass search engine queries from larger devices, such as laptops, and non-mobile devices, such as desktop computers in the near future.
As smartphones and tablet computers have become an indispensable part of the life of many consumers, what used to be predictable daily sessions online, for example, at a desktop computer, have been supplemented, if not replaced, by fragmented interactions using smaller interfaces existing on smartphones and smaller tablet computing devices. Many of these moments occur every day, for example, checking the time, texting a spouse, chatting with friends on social media. Relevant to the present technology, some of these fragmented interactions, referred to by some as “micro moments,” are “I want to buy” moments.